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OK, I just read a sentence that made me think about this article. I’m gonna paraphrase it for our purposes: “In an industry in which all who practice are scrambling for crumbs of success, to even quietly [challenge said industry] can be daunting.” I can’t know what Klint was thinking, but I know that work taking on the status quo is often inconsistent with achieving status through making that work…so the urge to compromise or water down for the sake of “crumbs of success” is always there. A posthumous release is a solution against this. It allows you to take outrageous risk, for its own sake, and not have to face the backlash. Cowardly? You could say so. But you could also say unselfish and self-aware.

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“does placing economic value on something directly affect how we experience it?”

Knee jerk yes. But not necessarily that we value it MORE. I notice that we’re so wired to value money for its own sake that as soon as we give it up for something, we start nitpicking and looking for shortcomings in that something.

I’ve seen this mostly in the context of food or direct services. For music and art, I do think ppl assume it’s not that great if they can get it easily and/or cheaply (ex. the world class violinist who played in a subway station and no one noticed).

Also: I felt palpable frustration at not being able to access Yassin Bey (aka Mos Def)’s last album, since it was exclusively released as a museum exhibit. I’m not mad at him, but I’m not sure it made me value his music any more. It just kinda felt like him taking his frustration out on the market (which is his right). Wu-Tang’s stunt felt a little more like performance art proper, a little more layered and thought out.

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Amazing research! I learned so much reading this. Can't wait for the B-side. ♡

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